boxofdelights: (Default)
[personal profile] boxofdelights
I picked this meme up from [personal profile] gwyneira.

• What are you currently reading?

How Should a Person Be?, by Sheila Heti. I hate it. But there are parts that are so good that I keep reading, hoping that when I get to the end, when I can see the whole thing, I'll see something worth seeing. Like this:
Yesterday Margaux told me a story that her mother often tells about when she was a baby. It took Margaux a long time to talk, and everybody thought she was a little dumb. Margaux's mother had a friend who was a bit messed up and really into self-help books and all sorts of self-improvement tapes. One day, she had been telling Margaux's mother about a technique in which, whatever problem you came across in your life, you were just supposed to throw up your hands and say, Who cares? That night, as Margaux's parents and her slightly older sister were sitting around the dinner table and Margaux was in her high chair, her sister spilled her milk and the glass broke all across the table. Her mother started yelling, and her sister started crying. Then, from over in the high chair, they heard little Margaux going, Who cares?
I'm sorry, but I'm really glad she's my best friend. If I had known, when I was a baby, that in America there was a baby who was throwing up her hands and saying, first words out of her mouth, Who cares? and that one day she'd be my best friend, I would have relaxed for the next twenty-three years, not a single care in the world.


• What did you recently finish reading?

The Coroner's Lunch, by Colin Cotterill. I should post about that. I liked it.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

Probably Cold Cereal, by Adam Rex. Recommended by [personal profile] wired.

Date: 2012-12-20 01:32 am (UTC)
amaebi: black fox (Default)
From: [personal profile] amaebi
Oh, I love that passage!

Though my very favourite child's-first-words remain "Thank you, madam, the agony is now much abated."

Date: 2012-12-20 02:20 am (UTC)
schemingreader: (Default)
From: [personal profile] schemingreader
I read the Sheila Heti book. I felt, throughout, like I just didn't get it. She was supposed to be writing a feminist play and it was like she'd never heard of feminism.

But I liked the passages, like this one, where she gives you dialog as she hears it. There was another, where she gets into a crazy conversation about bird milk with a clerk...really good.

Date: 2012-12-20 11:46 pm (UTC)
gwyneira: This is a picture of my great-grandmother Margaret. (Default)
From: [personal profile] gwyneira
Ooh, I might have to check out the Adam Rex book; I really liked The True Meaning of Smekday.

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